


Not A Shitty 'Eighties Fucking Romcom

by TobermorianSass



Series: The Skywalker Family and Other Disasters [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack Treated Seriously, Everyone swears like sailors, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6154045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem with Kylo Ren is that he's the kind of gullible idiot who believes his family when they tell him 'eighties romcoms are the height of romance and therefore, the way to go when acquiring a boyfriend.</p><p>It doesn't help, either, that Poe and Rey spend their time encouraging this dubious belief of Ren's. It's not like <em>they're</em> on the receiving end of Ren's romantic overtures.</p><p>No, it's just Hux, bearing the brunt of it all. All he wants to do is write his dissertation and join GCHQ. Maybe. Probably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A Shitty 'Eighties Fucking Romcom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



> This is entirely [EssayOfThoughts'](http://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts) sandpit. I'm just playing in it because she's been kind enough to let me. Belated happy birthday, Aich, I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> This fic has been translated into Russian by the lovely helumo and [can be read over here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4170775).

Kylo Ren wakes up on the morning after The Incident, feeling like he’s run into a wall and a vague sinking sensation in his stomach that tells him something’s not quite right with the world.

Further introspection reveals two things: he’s hungry and also, he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his life having Hux hand him first-aid kits to fix his bloodied nose or accidentally snogging him while piss drunk in the student bar’s bathroom stalls.

It’s the second one that proves to be the root of all his problems.

* * *

Kylo Ren comes trailing in at the tail end of the LGBT Soc meeting, looking like a puppy left out in the rain and Poe and Rey _know_ they should be better than this when he word vomits the sordid story about The Incident and how Hux – his knight in shining armour ( _rugby kit, more like_ , says Finn in an undertone) – saved him from Dark Evil Forces (his father and his best mate Chewie) by giving him a first aid kit to fix his nose and then moans about how he doesn’t know how to tell Hux he’s kind of maybe in love with him –

But it’s also really fucking hard _not_ to give into the temptation posed by Kylo’s sad bedraggled face and his overwrought earnestness and they’re only _human_.

“I feel like I’m being torn apart,” he tells them earnestly, and Poe rolls his eyes dramatically behind Ren’s back.

“What you want,” says Rey, “is grand romance. You need to sweep him off his feet – or, y’know, talk to him, that works too.”

Both Finn and Kylo look at her like she’s out of her mind, but for very different reasons.

“Hux?” says Finn skeptically. “You want him to go up to Supreme Lad Hux, and ask him if he wants to be buggered up the arse?”

“Talking,” says Kylo, injecting a surprising amount of venom into the word. “I need to _show_ him.”

“Dinner,” Poe suggests, not quite seriously. “Or cards – you know the ones with hearts and those tacky little things that play _Careless Whispers_ on repeat?”

“No,” says Rey. “You ought to write him a poem. Just for him.”

“Stand outside his window and read him excerpts of Romeo and Juliet,” says Poe.

“Not _Shakespeare_ ,” says Rey, barely keeping the quiver out of her voice. “ _So_ last century. What you want is your grandad’s anthology, midnight serenade –”

“No, a song,” says Poe. “It has to be a song –“

“What, with a boombox?” says Finn. “Like a shitty ‘eighties fucking romcom?”

They realize, just a moment too late, that there’s a strange light in Kylo Ren’s eyes when Finn mentions ‘eighties romcoms.

“A _boombox_ ,” says Kylo, like this isn’t going to end in tears. “ _Of course_.”

To their utter amazement, he actually stomps away immediately, muttering about _grand romance_.

“Uh,” says Rey. “Wow.”

“ _Shit_ ,” says Poe. “He’s not serious, is he?”

Finn and Rey look at him pityingly.

“ _Shit_ ,” says Poe. “ _Shit_. _Shit, fuck, buggering wanker_.”

* * *

Kylo takes step two of his plan to seduce Hux to Phasma, because Phasma, unlike Rey and the other people at the LGBT Soc, Phasma listens to _real_ music made for _real_ people – none of this phony hipster shit that everyone seems to like nowadays.

“So what I’m hearing from you,” Kylo says, blinking slowly, “is that Nine Inch Nails is _not_ a good choice if I want to get Hux to give me the time of day.”

Phasma closes her eyes and it’s only the thought of all the blackmail material she’ll have later that allows her to reply with considerable patience: “No. No. Definitely not Nine Inch Nails.”

“Oh,” says Kylo, disappointed. “Huh.”

“Have you considered something a little bit more, uh,” Phasma searches for the right word. “Conventional? Maybe, something tender?”

“Nine Inch Nails does love songs,” Kylo says hopefully.

“No,” Phasma says firmly. “Not unless you want another bloody nose.”

* * *

Luke Skywalker wakes up to an email from his lone aerospace engineering PhD student the Monday morning after he’s entered his forced sabbatical thanks to his nephew’s Incident and spends an hour squinting at his screen suspiciously as he tries to decipher the message.

It’s just one line long (minus the greeting and the polite sign off) and says: _I’d just like to state for the record, in advance, that I had nothing to do with any of this_.

Technically, Luke muses, this is none of his business because he’s on a sabbatical and doubly not his business because the only reason he’s even handling this PhD is because his sister has a soft spot for the kid, but this kind of message is the kind that turns up in James Bond films and it gives him a bad feeling. He’s had a lifetime of vaguely worded messages from Han Solo, enough to feel worried every time one turns up in his inbox. It’s the kind of message that Han sends just before he disappears on one of his mysterious long trips, only for them to discover that once again, they’re in overdraft, their lawyer desperately wants to talk to them, they’ve got one hundred crates full of plastic bananas in their backgarden and Colonel Hux from MI6 is descending on them for tea and a drug smuggling investigation. 

On the other hand, it could just be the average student’s proclivity for the theatrical.

 _As long as you stick to your schedule_ , Luke replies, _and this isn’t a roundabout way of telling me some foreign government’s been getting at you, it’s all right_?

He considers showing Han the email because Han’s the sort of person who knows people who knows people, but then decides that, no, showing Han Solo is exactly the kind of decision which would end in them ending up with one hundred crates full of hollow, plastic bananas scattered around campus.

Besides, it’s probably just student theatrics, he tells himself.

* * *

“You,” says Kylo Ren, towering impressively over Finn. “You listen to music.”

Finn looks around, but there’s none of the rugby team or Poe or Rey in sight, so it’s just him and Ren.

“Um,” he says. “Yes. So do lots of people.”

“Yes,” says Kylo impatiently. “But you know what _real_ music is. None of this phony shit.”

 “Okay,” says Fin slowly.

“What kind of song would _you_ pick?” says Kylo.

Finn looks around for an escape. “Um,” he says, trying to buy himself time. “What do you mean what kind of song?”

Ren makes an irritable gesture with a gloved hand – _gloves in fucking summer_ , Finn thinks.

“For Hux,” he says. “We’ve discussed this already.”

“Ah,” Finn replies. “Hux. Ah.”

Kylo Ren continues to loom ominously over him. There’s no one in sight, no Rey or Poe, for whose sake he can conveniently postpone answering this question. He’s not entirely sure that Little Mix counts as _real_ music in Ren’s eyes.

“Something not phony?” he hazards.

 Ren rolls his eyes, which looks far more comical than it should coupled with that daft mask he insists on wearing. “Yes but _what_?” he says.

He’s actually serious about it. Kylo Ren is serious about standing outside Hux’s window with a boombox in the name of romance. Finn’s mind boggles at the image and tries to imagine Hux’s reaction. His brain feels like that weird painting Poe once showed him, the one with the clocks melting all over the place.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Ren is going to get his nose broken _again_ if he goes through with this, and probably also, get plastered with rotten eggs. Possibly arrested by the police too.

“Yes?” says Kylo, leaning forward in a way that’s threatening and impressive all at once.

“The Imperial March,” Finn blurts out. “He likes marches – Hux – and the composer – your grandfather – wasn’t a phony?”

Kylo Ren considers this thoughtfully and then without a word, he turns on his heel and leaves in a flurry of black.

Finn sighs, relieved. Whatever happens next, he hopes Ren won’t hold it against him.

* * *

There’s just one catch to this otherwise brilliant plan: Kylo Ren does not personally own a boombox.

To be precise, his _dad_ owns a boombox he’s terribly fond of, but to get it Kylo would have to _apologize_ and the fact of the matter is, the injured party in this situation is _obviously_ himself and he isn’t going to demean his literary genius by apologizing to his _dad_ who is about as literary or full of genius as a lump of cold, hard rock. Kylo’s desperate, but he’s not _that_ desperate and the thought of _begging_ his dad and the _endless_ string of questions and jokes that’ll inevitably follow are immensely off-putting to a spirit as sensitive and finely-attuned as his. He _could_ ask Chewie, but Chewie has developed a nasty tendency to pull out his crossbow every time Kylo crosses his path and Kylo isn’t entirely sure that Chewie wouldn’t let one of his arrows loose and then claim the trigger released by accident afterwards.  There’s only so many times Hux can play knight in shining armour before the act gets old and not very seductive and Kylo Ren is _not_ a damsel in distress. Whatever anyone else might say.

Asking his mother would only end in her locking it up in her study and Uncle Luke would ask too many questions and then make snide and asinine remarks about how true depth is all a matter of perception and all life is trapped and frozen in a Baudrillardian simulacra anyway, so what do ‘phony’ and ‘real’ mean when all these categories are artifices designed to reify the world into simplistic categories of convention, can you ever be _really_ real and besides, how do you distinguish between the Real and the real?

Besides Luke Skywalker’s on sabbatical and also, Kylo Ren kind of just destroyed his classroom in a fit over the comparative artistic merits of Anakin Skywalker’s poetry versus T S Eliot. It makes things awkward, to say the least.

This means Kylo Ren has to turn to solution two, which is follow in his father’s footsteps and turn to a life of crime – or, as his dad likes to call it, ‘ethically challenged activities’.

Phasma proves surprisingly unwilling to join in on this in any capacity except as a look out, maybe a diversion.

“You know you could get into trouble with this,” she tells him. “If your mum or dad files a complaint. I don’t plan on being booked for aiding and abetting theft.”

 “It’s not stealing,” he says. “It belongs to _me_ , it’s my _birthright_.”

“I’m fairly certain your birthright is your trust fund,” she replies dryly, but she comes along with him anyway and even does a successful job of distracting his mother with some convoluted question about whether or not the whole concept of fouling isn’t a bit archaic and if removing some of those restrictions wouldn’t help make hockey more palatable to a modern audience.

“No,” he hears Leia tell Phasma. “We’re not turning the hockey teams into Ultimate Fighting but with sticks. No you may not write to the Southern Counties Hockey Association with your suggestion. No you may not write to the International Hockey Federation telling them you think that fouls are outdated and must be abolished and if I catch so much as a _whiff_ of you going after _Snoke_ with all of this, I will make sure I _personally_ supervise your dissertation research – understand?”

His mother is a political scientist by major, but somehow he doesn’t think that’ll stop her from supervising Phasma’s thesis anyway.

“You owe me a drink,” says Phasma, once they’ve hauled the bloody thing into her car. “Five drinks.”

Kylo opens his mouth to object, but Phasma just happens to stretch and flex her muscles and he decides that maybe five drinks isn’t too high a price to pay for the sake of Grand Romance.

* * *

Luke gets a call from Leia on Wednesday.

“I’m on a sabbatical,” he tells her. “A sabbatical is when a professor leaves his university life behind to rejuvenate and water his spirit away from the soul-crushing atmosphere of the system –“

“You’re on sabbatical because you don’t have a spine,” she tells him, very soul-crushingly.

“I have a spine,” he replies. “It’s a very functional one. I like to keep it flexible –”

 “Very droll,” she tells him, cutting him off before he can make a puerile joke about tantric sex. “My sixth sense is tingling.”

This piques Luke’s interest. “Really?” he says. “What’s it saying?”

“That I have a bad feeling about something,” she says. “My son’s been too quiet lately.”

Luke very tactfully avoids pointing out that it’s only been a week since Kylo Ren had a meltdown in the undergrad poetry seminar that ended with one destroyed computer, one destroyed whiteboard and three broken chairs, also, with him on a forced sabbatical for the sake of his nerves.

“I don’t have office hours anymore,” he tells her instead.

“He’s your _nephew_ ,” says Leia. “And your godson. Aren’t you worried about him?”

Luke thinks about the email from Poe Dameron and thinks maybe, just maybe, these two things are related. This isn’t a hot potato he wants to be holding, or in any way responsible for, when the music stops. Which, knowing Kylo, is probably going to be very soon.

Anyway, it’s not like he hasn’t spent forty years dealing with two of the most strong-willed, ill-tempered people on the planet – more, if he counts growing up with Leia. He deserves this sabbatical, if only for that.

“He’s _your_ son.”

“He’s at least a _quarter_ of your responsibility.”

“I spoke to my therapist last night,” Luke says distantly, finishing his game of four-suite Spider Solitaire. “He says my work-life balance has gone for a toss and I need to disconnect from the stressors in my surroundings and work through my accumulated neuroses, or else my consciousness will keep contracting and I will become a mindless zombie –“

“ _Luke_ ,” Leia says dangerously.

“Or a dangerous serial killer,” Luke finishes serenely. “He also mentioned the Caribbean.”

“Your therapist’s been _dead_ for twenty _years_.”

“Well I’m sorry you’re so close-minded about this, Leia, but I happen to have a perfectly serviceable Ouija board and no one _gets_ me like he does.”

There’s silence on the other end and Luke wonders if he might _actually_ have gotten away with it this time.

“Han’s with you, isn’t he?” Leia demands suspiciously.

“No,” Luke says uncertainly. “Not really.”

It’s not a _complete_ lie. Han’s _bags_ are strewn all over the ground floor of Luke’s house, but Han himself is… _somewhere_. _Definitely_ not doing something ethically challenged. _Definitely_ not in the process of shifting some of his accounts offshore to the Cayman Islands. Or booking tickets to the Cayman Islands.

“Not _really_?”

“Spiritually,” says Luke, hunting around in his trash for a wrapper of some sort. “He’s with us spiritually, all the time. Physically – well that’s the problem, isn’t it – hey Leia?”

He crumples the wrapper by the mouthpiece of his phone. “I think the connection’s dropping – you know – I can barely hear you, Leia, I’m sorry – you know what, let’s talk tomorrow? All right? All right –“

“ _Luke_ –“

“Bye, I love you.”

“ _LUKE_ –“

He definitely does _not_ slam the receiver around, _or_ look around like a frightened rabbit as though Leia Organa has the power to materialize out of thin air.

“You owe me, Han,” he says to the thin air, as he disconnects the phone altogether.

* * *

Hux, contrary to what everyone else seems to think, is a patient man. He shares a flat in town with three fellow postgrads who seem to be stuck at the annoying undergrad phase where they think coming back home at four in the morning, piss drunk and singing songs, is funny. He owns three cats and he patiently trails around after them, brushing fur off furniture and polishing scratches out of wood. He’s never _once_ let any of this get to him, not even when he’s hacking at his dissertation and Mildred has taken a flying jump off his shelf and landed on his papers, or he has a presentation to make and his housemates are raising hell in the kitchen. Hux is a mild-mannered, patient and, on occasion, a genial person. Not the life of the party, but a decent human being.

Kylo Ren, he thinks, is enough to test the decency of any human being, quite frankly, and he’s reaching the end of his tether.

It’s not even the poems that irritate him with their overwrought metaphors, constant comparisons to various pagan deities and complete lack of anything vaguely like syntax so much as the song and dance Kylo makes _about_ them.  If Kylo Ren wasn’t so pathetically earnest about it, he’d suspect it was an attempt at mockery. Its thrown discipline among the undergrad fifteen completely. They all snicker whenever he approaches. Some of them have started reciting Harry Potter-esque valentines whenever he approaches: _his hair is as red as organic beetroot salad, his eyes as enigmatic as the aurora borealis_. There have been inane and jejune dirty limericks. There have been mock damsel-in-distress scenes designed _explicitly_ to make Hux grit his teeth. There has been _banter_ over drinks.

And now Kylo Ren’s topped it all up with bringing this ridiculous whatever the hell this is to his doorstep.

He stares at the envelope his housemate is holding out to him, glad that he can’t look Hux in the eye right now. Eye contact is bad. Eye contact is dangerous. Eye contact will mean having to acknowledge the fact that they exist in the same space and that Kylo Ren has broken into the inviolable and sacrosanct space between housemates who politely dislike each other with a _poem_.

A _poem_.

Hux could _strangle_ something. Or rather, someone. Specifically, someone called Kylo Ren.

“Private correspondence,” he tells his housemate sourly and turns on his heel before his housemate gets any ideas about _reading_ the missive in his hand.

* * *

Kylo Ren makes it a whole week after he announces the plan to Phasma, without putting his foot accidentally in anything. It amazes everyone, most of all Phasma – though she’s seen the poems he’s been leaving Hux like a sad corvid trying to seduce a human with shiny but useless pieces of garbage and knows, therefore, that it’s all just a paper thin veneer of respectability that’s liable to peel away at any given moment.

It’s not long before disaster strikes, though and when it comes, it comes in the form of Jamie B, the self-proclaimed Archbishop of Banterbury, Trevor Bates, and their former rugby teammate, Finn.

Oh, and, of course, Poe Dameron and the LGBT society.

“Look at this little shit,” says Trevor, one evening at the student bar. “All grown up and making a tidy bit of money for himself now he’s gone home to roost with the gays and lezzers –“

Sometimes Phasma thinks Hux should invest in forcibly dragging these arses into the twenty-first century. Fuck knows he has enough on his hands as it is though, trying to just keep them in hand, work on his dissertation and deal with Kylo Ren at the same time.

“Piss off,” Finn tells him without rancour. “You don’t have a monopoly on betting pools.”

“No,” says Trevor. “But that doesn’t have to stop me from taking your ‘ickle piggy bank away.”

 Phasma closes her eyes and tries not to inhale her beer.

“Is there a problem?” someone says pleasantly.

Poe Dameron. Of course.

She seriously contemplates inhaling all her beer then and there because Trevor, instead of backing down like a normal human being takes their little cash box with their amusing, if pathetic, bet about Ren’s odds with Hux and throws it on the floor.

“Yeah,” he tells Poe Dameron, former RAF pilot and resident campus daredevil. “It’s you – and your little friend with his moneybags here. It’s our bet, see?”

Poe Dameron doesn’t even skip a beat: his fist ploughs hard into Trevor’s face and Trevor goes down like a dead log.

Phasma fastidiously does _not_ get involved. She sits there and sips her beer as the student union bar devolves quickly into a brawl.

It isn’t even the _weekend_. It isn’t even the _weekend_ and they’re having a Friday-night style melee on the floor, rugby team versus literally everyone else. It’s a miracle Hux doesn’t do social drinking and that Hux is happy to live the life of the prosaic and sedate, if incredibly stressed, postgrad student. He wouldn’t be able to do anything though, she reflects morosely, just turn an ugly shade of red which clashes with his hair – and yell ineffectually at everyone.

Kylo Ren is obviously missing. Obviously, composing sonnets somewhere in the library, trying to peer (in)discreetly around stacks of books to study Hux. Obviously. Obviously, they’re the only two people who remain unbanned from the student union bar. The two people who _don’t_ have to face the full weight of Leia Organa’s wrath. Obviously the _two_ people responsible for all this mess are far away from it, enjoying a peaceful Thursday night while all hell let loose in their name.

Obviously. That’s just how fucking ridiculous Kylo Ren is: fucking up people’s lives from a fucking distance, by virtue of just _existing_ in their proximity.

It’s just un-fucking-fair.

* * *

On the other side of the campus, on the third floor, by the stack of shelves dedicated to political theory, Hux arrives at the nasty conclusion that he is being watched.

It’s a strange sensation that starts at the back of his neck, then turns into a sensation not unlike that of a mosquito buzzing nearby and then morphs, finally, into the uncomfortable sensation of being watched as in studied as in visually dissected by an invisible entity.

Well, technically not invisible. Kylo Ren isn’t very good at hiding, what with the giant mask thing he insists on wearing around campus to keep up the industrial, post-nuclear apocalypse vibe he tries to project. And the black. And the generally being unable to keep from getting under everyone else’s feet.

Hux determinedly continues making notes in painfully neat copperplate even though his mind is now completely distracted from the dense book in front of him. It’s so much easier to wonder about the whys and wherefores of Kylo Ren. Why, for example, is he doing this to Hux in particular. What quality of his endears him so much to Ren. How can he excise that quality and shed this uncomfortable tail of his.

And, and this is the part which makes him feel really uncomfortable, _does he really want to be rid of this tail of his_?

Hux sighs, staring at the utter gibberish he’s scribbled, and calls it a day.

“Ren,” he says. “You can come out now. I know you’re there.”

There’s silence for a moment and then Kylo Ren shuffles into view guiltily, silly mask and all. They’re the only people in this particular section of the library and Hux feels like he should tell Ren that if he’s trying to follow someone around in a library, maybe he should not breathe so heavily, but he just doesn’t have the heart to. It’s getting really fucking annoying at this point, how little willpower he’s able to muster to make Ren stop.

“Hello,” says Kylo, awkwardly.

Hux tries to think of something to say to fill the awkwardness of the silence that ensues but Ren beats him to it.

“You’ve been working very hard.”

“Yes,” says Hux, fiddling with his books. “It’s a habit of mine.”

“You aren’t tired.”

“No,” says Hux. “I’ve got a dissertation to write – don’t you?”

Ren makes a dismissive noise. “You should take more breaks,” he says instead. “This is bad for your posture.”

It’s pretty rich coming from Ren, who slouches around the campus like a brooding duck. Hux eyes him dubiously, as he starts packing his bag.

“Why are you here?” he asks Ren instead, in a sad attempt to return to the question of work – and Ren’s apparent lack of it.

Ren, at least has this part thought out. He shows him a book, _The Cambridge History of blahblahblah_ – Hux rolls his eye at the men on the cover and wonders if anyone’s ever told Kylo Ren that the angry young men movement involves more than a nebulous, imagined idea of what the working class wants, even among shortlived British beat figures like Anakin Skywalker, and that Ren is never going to be part of that no matter how much he wants it because there is nothing, nothing that even vaguely connects the childhoods of Kylo Ren and Anakin Skywalker.

He knows this because he’s listened to Kylo Ren’s extensive lectures about the history and childhood of Britain’s most misunderstood traitor. He also knows this about Ren’s childhood because Kylo Ren showed him the poem which turned The Incident into something much more sordid and infinitely worse. Ren has issues alright, just not the same ones as Anakin. Someone’s going to have to let him down gently one day and it isn’t going to be Hux.

Probably.

“I’m working,” Kylo Ren tells him proudly. “An expansive history of my grandfather’s work and its sociohistorical significance in the twenty-first century.”

“The literature section is downstairs,” says Hux, as he packs away his laptop. “This is politics and history.”

“There were politics too –“

“On the other end of the room,” Hux tells him dryly. “Definitely not under political theory and history of fifteenth century Ireland.”

Kylo Ren looks down at his feet in a suspiciously guilty manner and Hux feels a familiar surge of annoyance, only this time it’s mixed with something else. Hux suspects it might be ‘exasperated fondness’ but putting labels to feelings as strange and wobbly as this is dangerous. It asks for trouble. Labelling things calls them into existence and if Hux is ‘fond’ of Kylo Ren, then that means – well it means something that is absolutely irrelevant, because it’s not true, so it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t figure it out right now.

 “I thought,” says Kylo Ren, “I might diversify – my understanding – history of political conflict.”

 _You’re a shit liar_ , Hux says mentally but sighs out loud and then takes the fucking plunge.

“Have you had dinner?” he asks Ren.

* * *

The day after Hux accidentally ends up having dinner with him – at McDonalds, admittedly, but progress is progress – Kylo Ren plans his scheme all out with a singular one-mindedness that surprises everyone, including Phasma. This should feel insulting, but it makes him feel vaguely proud. Hux is precise and ordered in a way that Kylo will never be and the thought that he could be inching incrementally closer to being as ordered as Hux is definitive proof that Kylo Ren is in with a good chance with Hux.

The plan, as it stands, is quite simple. In a week, it will be Hux’s birthday. In a week, Kylo Ren will take his boombox, stand outside Hux’s window and blare… a song. He has to pick a song, but that’s really a piffling concern. The point is, there will be music and romance in the air and he, Kylo Ben-Organa-Solo Ren, will confess his feelings to Hux. Hux will be enchanted by this and – Kylo’s fantasies turn vague at this point, but they would not look out of place in a romantic film from the eighties.

Not that Kylo Ren is a _romantic_ because he’s _all_ about angry young realism. Really.

There is absolutely nothing that can go wrong with this, he tells himself. Nothing at all, not even the fact that Hux only ever looks at him like he’s a particularly troublesome small child.

No, he tells himself, there’s nothing that can go wrong in the least.

* * *

“Leia called the other day,” Luke tells Han conversationally, as they board their flight to the Cayman Islands at Heathrow. “Her sixth sense was tingling.”

“If it’s about Ben,” Han announces, in somewhat strident tones, to a startled steward, “I’m not getting involved.”

“He’s your _son_ ,” says Luke, smiling apologetically at the steward. “Nerves. Flight nerves.”

“Who’re you calling _nervy_?”

“No one,” says Luke soothingly. “And anyway it was only _half_ about Kylo –“

“Ben,” says Han truculently. “It’s a perfectly good name.”

“It was only half about him,” Luke continues. “The other half was all you. She wanted to talk to you about him.”

This was not strictly true, but Leia had more or less _implied_ it. Metaphysically. Spiritually. Probably.

“Yeah? Well I don’t want to talk about him,” Han says, sounding not unlike his son.

“She’s going to track you down and have a fit when she finds out where you’ve gone.”

“Not if she finds out what’s in your laptop  firs – _shit_.”

Han snaps his mouth shut and looks at Luke with a startled guilty expression on his face that sends Luke’s heart plummeting all the way down into his feet.

“Han,” he says warningly.

“Now look here,” Han says firmly. “It’s all _you_ , you’re the one who insisted on telling him about his grandfather and then let him get away with this daft angry young man rubbish and got me into all kinds of trouble –“

“ _Han_.”

“If there’s anyone to be held responsible for this it’s _you_ ,” says Han. “You, Luke Skywalker. Not me – not Leia, _you_ –“

“ _Han Solo_ ,” Luke says dangerously. “What. Is. In. My. Laptop.”

“Don’t try to distract me from the issue here,” Han says, valiantly struggling to keep the argument going. “Which is you and pretending to be innocent when you’re the one responsible for everything, the root of this issue –“

“ _HAN_.”

“Which is that none of this would have happened if you and your sister hadn’t stayed on land like you should have and then maybe not drawn me into your harebrained schemes to redeem your father –“

“Oh my god,” Luke moans. “You said you’d given it up. You said you’d given up smuggling.”

“ _Smuggling_?” says Han indignantly. “Who said anything about _smuggling_?”

Luke leans back against the seat and closes his eyes. “I should have just talked to Leia.”

“Hey,” says Han, buckling his seatbelt and clinging on to Luke’s laptop – _Luke’s_ laptop, not his, _Luke’s_ – at the same time. “It’s me, don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you,” Luke retorts. “Not your thrillseeking instinct. I should have called Leia.”

“No you shouldn’t have,” says Han. “She’ll have a fit anyway and Ben can learn how to act like an adult for once in his fucking life.”

“He sent me an email,” Luke says, eyes still shut. “He hacked another student’s account and sent me an email –“

“ _What_ –“ Han frowns suspiciously. “How do you know it’s Ben?”

“Because _he’s your son_ and he’s about as subtle as you are and he thinks sending me an email about classic love songs that express ‘infinite desire’ and the state of ‘being torn apart inside’ is something that Poe Dameron would do.”

“ _Poe Dameron_ ,” says Han incredulously. “ _Love songs_. _What._ ”

The thing about Han Solo that fascinates Luke the most, and hasn’t grown old even after all these years, is his ability to make about seven different, equally outlandish expressions in a short space of time as he contemplates the _ridiculousness_ of the rest of the world – nowadays usually in the form of his son.

“You’re insane –“ says Han, when he’s done with his facial gymnastics. “He’s insane – all of you –”

“Congratulations,” Luke says solemnly. “You’re going to be a father-in-law. If we get out of this mess alive.”

* * *

“Guys,” says Poe, the day after the barfight. “Guys.”

Finn is lying on the grass, basking in the sun like an overgrown puppy, Rey is busy throwing sticks for Beebee-Ate, neither of them particularly interested in what Poe has to say to them.

“ _Guys_ ,” says Poe, his voice taking on a slightly panicky note. “Someone’s hacked my email.”

Finn opens one eye and squints at him. “You didn’t change your password did you?” he says.

“Okay,” says Poe, staring at his phone. “Okay which one of you fuckers sent Skywalker an email asking him what’s the greatest love song of all time?”

There’s a single moment where his words hang in the still summer air before Finn rolls over and curls up laughing and Rey bursts into a fit of giggles.

“What?” she says, through her laughter. “Skywalker – love song – what?”

“ _Guys_ ,” says Poe. “This isn’t funny – this isn’t – there’s an _email_ from Skywalker and someone’s read it – there’s a _fucking reply oh my god_.”

This only makes them laugh harder.

“Are you _sure_ you didn’t send it?” says Rey. “Are you _sure_?”

“Listen,” says Poe, staring in horror at the reply. “What – no – which one of you fucking wankers fucking did this?”

Finn shakes his head silently. “Not me,” he mouths, tears streaming  down his face. “Listen, why don’t you ask him about tantric sex and shit next time – sex tips –“

“It’s not _funny_ ,” Poe wails. “It’s Luke _Skywalker_ – fuck – it’s fucking Ren isn’t it – _fucker. This is all your fault_ –”

Rey and Finn only laugh harder at this.

“Sure,” says Rey. “Mr It-Has-To-Be-A-Song-To-Count-As-Romance.”

“It’s _your_ fault,” he tells Finn. “Grand romance with a boombox my _fucking arse_ –“

He flops down on the grass next to Finn and Rey sits down next to him before nuzzling his arm like an overgrown cat.

“Luke won’t care,” Rey says solemnly. “And if you’re _really_ worried, you should show IT.”

 Finn bursts into giggles again. “Shit – can you imagine Pava’s face – all of IT – the whole school.”

“Come on Beebee-Ate,” Poe tells his service dog with dignity. “Let’s leave the children to play by themselves.”

* * *

“You think you might have made a mistake,” Phasma deadpans. “Taking Kylo Ren out to dinner.”

“He paid for himself,” Hux points out, trying not to squirm under Phasma’s penetrating gaze. “And it was McDonalds.”

“All right,” says Phasma. “You happened to have dinner in the vicinity of each other, keeping a distance of more than twelve inches but less than three feet between you, enough that you could be mistaken for _friends_ , maybe even _affectionate_ ones.”

Affection. Hux turns the word over gingerly in his mind, carefully examining it from every single angle. It makes his nerves jangle and sets off all kinds of red flashing lights inside different corners of his brain, each of them telling him to get up and _run_ , preferably in the opposite direction. He has a dissertation to finish. A prospective job at GCHQ. The whole bloody field of foreign intelligence to conquer. An intelligence network to ascend. Maybe even a directorship. Somewhere, out there in his future.

It’s quite possible that Phasma is making fun of him.

“It was a mistake,” he says truculently.

“How many mistakes have you made now?”

He barely resists growling at her. Mistakes are for other people, people who make disastrous messes out of their lives.  Hux does not plan for disasters. Hux _avoids_ disasters. Disasters do not enter Hux’s life.

Except for Kylo Ren, that is.

“Some,” he says grudgingly. “Not as many as I might have made. _And_ I’ve averted quite a few with quick thinking.”

Phasma bites the inside of her cheek. “Are you literally trying to get your life blown up by a ticking time bomb of mistakes past and present?”

Hux winces.

“Um,” he says. “Um.”

“So either you’re making mistakes,” says Phasma. “Or there’s something going on here. Or you’re going to have to answer for being a heartless bitch and leading Kylo Ren on.”

“I don’t see why it’s leading,” he says. “Everyone’s snogged in club bathrooms before.”

“Not with the same person for nearly five years running.”

“I think,” says Hux. “We might be straying from the issue at hand, which is the burgers Kylo Ren and I ate together last night and the taxonomical problems it poses me.”

“You know,” says Phasma, “if you were even vaguely emotionally competent you’d rearrange your fucking life and admit you have a thing for Kylo Ren, whether it’s saving his sorry arse or accidentally snogging him in bathrooms when your pissed out of your fucking mind or eating burgers with him in stoic silence in fucking McDonalds of all the places.”

“Yes,” says Hux. “Definitely straying from the issue at hand.”

The glare that Phasma gives him could kill, if only he wasn’t certain that his own glare was ten times more murderous.

“You need to work on your technique,” he murmurs.

“You need to work on being emotionally competent,” she tells him.

“I’m emotionally healthy,” he says. “My psych eval for you-know-what is all clear. Clearly you’re the one with issues here.”

Phasma rolls her eyes at him. “Fine. It wasn’t a date, you don’t have to hold Kylo Ren’s hand and you still get to play ice queen supreme in front of everyone. All right? Are you happy now?”

“No,” says Hux. “It doesn’t solve the poetry or the following me around.”

“That’s entirely on Ren,” she says. “I can’t do shite about it. You’re _his_ friend. _You_ solve it.”

“He’s not a puzzle,” says Hux. “He has to be _stopped_.”

“Snog him,” she tells him. “Tell him you love him. Swoon into his arms.”

Hux turns the full power of his glare on her. She doesn’t even wince.

“I think flippancy is a juvenile form of humour, personally,” he tells her. “I’m not going to do anything of the sort.”

She shrugs. “Personally, I think _you’re_ making a mistake with your whole – everything.”

“No, we’re simply missing a crucial something in our strategy,” says Hux. “Maybe we’re approaching it from the wrong angle –“

“ _Our_ strategy,” she says. “ _Our_.”

“As in we, yes,” Hux replies. “You realize that I singlehandedly run most of the sports functions in this university and that if I continue to be under ‘chronic and sustained pressure’ from Kylo Ren, it’s _you_ and the various teams which will suffer, don’t you?”

“You’re putting _me_ under chronic and sustained pressure above and beyond the call of duty,” Phasma mutters.

“So you understand,” says Hux, conveniently ignoring Phasma’s complaint. “Why it’s necessary for us to develop a working strategy to, um, fix this.”

Phasma scowls at him. Hux simply smiles back blandly at her.

“Right?” he says.

* * *

“ _LUKE_ ,” Leia says quite calmly, all things considered, when her brother finally picks up his cell phone.

“They don’t have the NHS here,” he tells her. “Please don’t deafen me.”

“I wouldn’t yell if you or Han picked up your phones like normal human beings,” she replies. “Fuck knows it’s enough having to deal with Ben without having to worry about someone – literally anyone – pulling their weight around here like responsible adults –“

“I’m responsible,” says Luke. “I replied to all my emails, even the ones from Ben, sent from Dameron’s account –“

“You _see_?” says Leia. “I’m here worrying my arse off about him and what do the two of you do? Disappear. Run away. _Run away_ from responsibilities as though you’re _twenty_ –“

“It wasn’t running,” Luke says with dignity. “I’ve been swept away into another sphere –“

“You eloped with my husband,” Leia says dryly. “Don’t dress it up. Where’s Han?”

“Meditating,” says Luke. “And there wasn’t any running. I’m too old for it.”

“ _Meditating_ ,” Leia says calmly. _Very_ calmly. “All right. What are _you_ going to do about Ben?”

“Nothing,” says Luke. “Neither should you.”

“ _Nothing_?”

Leia’s considered pre-emptively grounding her son before he can get into shit. Or confiscating his poetry book. Something to let him know she has her eye on him, something that will keep him from doing whatever the hell he’s planning on doing. The whole campus is in high spirits, the university bar’s nearly wrecked, her son is doing _something_ and Luke Skywalker wants her to sit around and do nothing.

Sometimes she thinks her brother might have dropped too much acid in the ‘seventies for his own good. She has it on good authority (herself) that this sort of thing fucks you up permanently. Either that, or one of their parents (their father) dropped Luke on his head when he was a baby. Maybe both.

“It’s a phase,” says Luke, much too calmly. “He’ll grow out of it.”

“He’s been growing out of it for ten sodding years,” Leia snaps, barely holding on to her temper. “I’ve had to ban half the university from the fucking bar because – fuck if I know why because no one’s willing to tell me why the sports and LGBT soc got into a fight in the first place – and you want me to do _nothing_ because _he’ll grow out of it_.”

“Oh I don’t know,” says Luke. “He sent me an email from Poe Dameron’s account the other day, pretending to be him – wanted to know what the best love song in the world is. You might be surprised –“

It’s amazing, Leia thinks, that they ever managed to hound Palpatine out of Mi6. Fortunate, even, that they hadn’t all ended up charged with treason and stuck in Dartmoor for life.

“Great,” says Leia. “Just what we need. An email hack for Snoke and his fuckers to smear us with and you think the most important thing here is Ben and puppy love – not to mention a holiday in the bloody Cayman Islands.“

“Oh Chewie,” Luke sighs. “He wasn’t supposed to crack –“

“ _LUKE_.”

“Trust me,” says Luke. “It’s a phase. He’ll be fine – it’ll all be fine.”

* * *

“Kylo my lad,” says Trevor, with all the affection of the thoroughly drunk. “You fucking madman. You brilliant fucking madman.”

“Fucking _ledge_ ,” says Jamie B, in fervent agreement, drunkenly scribbling on a banner. “Fucking _brilliant_.”

* * *

Hux is woken up on the morning of his birthday by the sound of roaring guitars, smashing drums, fucking _Meat Loaf_ outside his window and his housemate banging angrily on his door.

“Fucking open your window you fucking wanker,” his housemate yells as he bangs on his door.

When he opens his eyes, he’s lying on the floor and Millicent is yowling away, betrayed that he could do something as undignified as fall out of bed with a start and disrupt her beauty sleep. The display on his phone tells him it’s three in the bloody morning, which explains his housemate’s wrath, but doesn’t account for Meat Loaf ( _Meat Loaf_!) blaring in the background.

“Fucking hell,” he swears, underneath his breath, trying to avoid his three cats and his chair in the darkness. “Piss off,” he yells. “I’m awake.”

“Meat Loaf,” he whispers to Millicent, picking her up from the floor where she’s determined to trip him up and break his face on his heater. “Fucking Meat Loaf.”

Its sheer luck that keeps him from accidentally dropping Millicent in his horror at the scene on the road outside with, of course, Kylo Ren at the centre of this mess. Kylo Ren, with his stupid mask, holding a boombox up above his head – a boombox that’s blaring Meat Loaf in _earnest_. In _earnest_ – which, frankly, he’s not surprised, given Ren’s surprisingly terrible taste in music. Only it doesn’t stop with Ren. There’s also half the rugby team, in various stages of sloshedness, holding up banners and tunelessly singing along to _fucking Meat Loaf_ and the banners all have things like ‘KYLO HEARTS HUX’ (because fuck subtlety) and ‘GAY 4 U’ scribbled all over them in wobbly handwriting and there are _cell phones_ and people _filming this_ and lights are coming on in houses and –

Hux doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or maybe, turn himself over to the NHS for his own safety and wellbeing.

Phasma, he thinks in resignation, was right. Phasma’s always right. If he’d had any sense he’d have nipped this all in the bud and half the rugby team wouldn’t be hanging around here, yodeling like it’s a fucking post-football match party, with slogans and shite painted on banners. He’d be asleep in bed, like a normal person, and everything would be fine. _Fine_. Fine and without Meat Loaf.

Someone’s thrown open their window and is yelling at the guys to shut the fuck up, it’s three in the fucking morning. He sympathizes. Romance is grand and all, but much better when it’s stored away on film reels and the Top 40s. Not in real life and not like this. Especially not with Kylo Ren trying to prove that romance is alive. There is nothing that feels alive or burning, fiery romantic passion about this. This is definitely a ‘call the police and have these wankers arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct’ kind of situation.

Hux pictures Leia Organa’s face when she finds out her son’s been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct because Ren was trying to seduce him – or whatever the fuck he imagines he’s doing – and winces. He should just crawl back into bed and let this run its sorry length to whatever ending the police see fit. Go back to sleep and pretend he isn’t being serenaded with _I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That_ ) at three in the morning by the rugby team and Kylo Ren in his stupid post-apocalyptic goth whatever facemask and outfit. Pretend that life is normal and most importantly, that Phasma is _wrong_.

Because she _is_.

Sort of.

Maybe.

He sighs and puts his cat on the bed.

“I’ve called the police,” his housemate tells him, a martial glitter in his eyes, when Hux opens his door. His other housemate’s standing on the staircase landing, looking like he’s wandered into the middle of a battle, armed only with his teddy bear. Their third housemate is notoriously absent, hopefully dead. Knowing Hux’s luck, this is probably unlikely.

“ _Meat Loaf_ ,” says the second housemate, teddy bear dangling stupidly from one hand. “Meat _Loaf_.”

“Fucking whatever,” Hux mutters, pushing past the two of them and descending the stairs.

“He’s gone too far this time,” his housemate yells. “I’m not having with this.”

Hux only just about restrains himself from slamming the front door shut as a loud and clear message to his housemates. Like he hasn’t shown considerable patience and restraint every time they’re up at four in the fucking morning laughing away like stupid undergrads with stupid beer jokes, thinking they’re so fucking funny. Like he hasn’t been a model housemate.

The rugby guys must be really pissed, he thinks, if they think _leering_ down at him is a good idea. This is why Hux does not go on benders. Usually. Mostly. Fifty per cent of the time. Someone actually slaps him on the back and bellows HAPPY BIRTHDAY GENERAL in his ear and he winces: at the nickname, the yelling, the stink of beer –

 _Beer_. Christ, it’s like eighteen never ended for some of these wankers.

He pushes through the crowd of unruly rugby-player sized bodies to Kylo Ren, catches the sod by the scruff of his neck and hauls him off inside, boombox and all.

“You _bloody idiot_ ,” he hisses, unceremoniously shoving Kylo Ren up the stairs and past his gaping housemates into his room. He shuts the door and locks it: Ren isn’t going anywhere until he’s had his say and Hux has _a lot_ to say.

Ren’s settled himself on the floor, cradling that fucking boombox (Meat Loaf still rambling on like _fuck_ ) and looks up at him wide-eyed when Hux turns around to give him a piece of his mind. It should make Hux feel sorry for the man, possibly some variation of pity. Instead, it makes him want to physically break something.

“Stop that,” he hisses, pointing at the boombox. “Stop that now.”

Ren, mercifully, hits the pause button without arguing the point. “You don’t like Meat Loaf?” he says.

“I don’t –“ he pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s three in the bloody morning, _are you out of your mind_?”

“I can play Bonnie Tyler if you like,” Kylo says, timidly – if timidly is the word.

“ _No_ ,” snaps Hux. “That’s not the point –“

“Nine Inch Nails,” Kylo nods. “I _told_ Phasma –“

“Listen here you fucking numpty,” Hux practically shouts. “It’s three in the fucking morning, you’ve landed the whole rugby team pissed on my fucking doorstep, woken the whole neighbourhood with fucking Meat Loaf – _maybe try ‘dear Hux, I’m sorry for waking you up at arse’o’clock and pissing your housemates off_ ’ not fucking song choices and what the fuck is this supposed to mean? What the fuck is this for? Are you fucking trying – oh for fuck’s sake, take off that stupid mask I can’t fucking do this with you looking at me like that.”

Ren removes the mask. “You seemed to be doing quite well,” he points out.

Hux rubs his face with his hands. “All right,” he says. “You’ve obviously got some reason for this otherwise idiotic behaviour.”

Kylo Ren doesn’t reply immediately. Millicent – the little traitor – is rubbing her head against Ren’s arm, so obviously you know, Ren has to deal with that immediately, not answer Hux’s pressing questions before Hux has an aneurysm and possibly _dies_ or anything.

And he looks ridiculous, cradling the cat with those stupid pants and those stupid boots and that stupid oversized t-shirt and that stupid mask in his lap, sitting on the floor. Fucking ridiculous.

“Well,” says Ren, carefully avoiding making eye contact with Hux. “I think my plan might have backfired a little –“

“ _Might have backfired_ –“

“You make it so hard,” Ren whines. “You’re so – far away – isn’t he Millicent?”

“I’m standing _right here_ ,” Hux tells him.

Ren makes an irritated noise. “No you’re not,” he says, obscurely. “You’re there, here, but you’re never _there_.  You’ll pet Millicent, but you won’t give me the time of day unless you’re on a bender.”

“You’re not jealous of a _cat_?” Hux demands, incredulous. “I mean, she’s a bloody cat, I’m not about to fuck a cat – I’m not going to sit down and fucking pet your hair either –“

“I FANCY YOU, ALL RIGHT?”

Ren shouts this at the top of his lungs, like he’s about to throw a tantrum because he’s in love with Hux. Or something.

It’s fine, the yelling’s fine. It’s not like Hux needs a house to live in anyway. Or like he has housemates who aren’t listening in. Or that someone isn’t singing ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ outside his window, now that there’s no Meat Loaf. None of this matters. Nothing matters. Nothing. Not even Phasma being right because Phasma is always fucking right. She always was.

The thought of it bubbles up from his stomach and bursts out in hysterical laughter that makes him sink to the ground in – it’s impossible to tell if it’s despair or mirth.

“You make it so bloody hard,” Ren mumbles into Millicent’s fur as Hux continues to laugh and laugh.

Hux figures Ren can wait a few more soul-crushing seconds before he reassures him that yes, he had in fact figured Ren out because it’s not like Ren is a paragon of discretion.

“Christ,” he says eventually, through his laughter. “I’ve known for some time. You’re not exactly fucking subtle Ren.”

Ren looks at him, aggrieved. “You’re fucking impossible.”  

“Why _Meat Loaf_ , of all the bloody things?” he asks Ren, wiping tears from his eyes. “Why fucking _Meat Loaf_?”

Ren mutters something that sounds suspiciously like the words ‘uncle Luke’ and ‘romantic’, which, of course explains everything. The Skywalkers are bonkers. Everyone knows that. The real miracle lies in the fact that Kylo Ren still trusts them, after all these years. It would be sweet, maybe if Hux wasn’t almost inevitably on the receiving end of the Skywalker bonkersness via Ren’s pathetically trusting nature.

Hux gives up on making sense of any of this. He crawls across the floor to his bed and climbs in, instead.

Ren is still cradling Millicent, his face all small and pinched.

“Okay,” he tells Ren. “Its three in the morning, I have a class at nine and I’m nowhere _near_ drunk enough for this, so I’m going to lie down and you can tell me the whole sorry story from the start. All right?”

He switches off the lamp by his bedside. From outside, the raucous sound of half the rugby team being hauled off for being drunk and disorderly is slowly fading away: a few loud voices and laughs here and there, doors slamming and cars rolling away. Hux stares at the dark ceiling and listens to Ren breathing in the dark, then curses Phasma for being right. He rolls over and switches the light back on again.

“Get on the bed,” he tells Ren. “No touching. Just. Stop sitting there looking small and sorry for yourself – and remove your boots.”

Hux tells himself he can deal with this in the morning when his brain is more functional and that this isn’t the time bomb going off in his hands like Phasma said it would.

* * *

Its shit like this that makes Phasma question the supposed benefits of always being right. Shit like being woken up at six in the morning by a sort-of-but-not-quite sober Jamie B. begging her to come and bail out half the rugger team, because they’d got themselves arrested while they were pissed.

“You don’t understand,” he whines into the phone. “It was Ren –“

“You said it was fucking ledge last night you wanker,” she hears Trevor say in the background.

“I hope you filmed it,” says Phasma. “Or you can wait for Snoke. Or Hux.”

There’s lots of swearing and mumbling before Jamie B confirms that yes, they do have video evidence and yes, she can have all of it for her blog, _whatever Phasma just come and get us out before Hux or Snoke fucks us up_.

Hux can take his complaints to the team. Phasma’s merely a conduit at this point, a force for the inevitable. It’s a choice between this going up on the blog chronicling the Kylo Ren and Hux romance or one of the lads dumping this on YouTube for randos on the internet to witness their utter humiliation – versus just all of their university. At least this way Hux can track everyone down and murder them all in their sleep. It’s practically a charity service she’s running.

It takes two hours to upload the videos. Two whole fucking hours, but it’s done and it’s done before Hux’s first lecture. She makes it on to campus ten minutes early just so she can gloat.

Unfortunately for her, Hux, for the first time in his life, is late for class.

* * *

For the first time in his life Hux thinks he might understand why people call the walk of shame the walk of shame. Not like he’s done anything particularly shameful, but Kylo Ren, awkwardly trailing along after him with his boombox as Hux wheels his bike on to campus is an albatross around his bloody neck that makes him feel like he's the whore of fucking Babylon. It makes the walk onto campus feels like a particularly long drawn out one, worsened by the stares of literally every single student they pass. Hux wants to put it all down to Ren, who cuts an unusual figure even on campus among the LGBT Soc kids with their brightly coloured alt hairstyles or whatever the fuck they call it. But Ren is a fixture around these parts and sure, Hux doesn't listen to the local radio but he's fairly certain the lads have made the news, which means this has to be about _him_. Or well, him and Ren.

Phasma is also probably involved somehow. She always is.

He glances at Ren suspiciously, just to make sure it’s not something Ren’s doing behind his back. Ren simply stares back at him with a glazed expression when Hux turns around to glare at him.

They pass another group of students, all of them staring, all of them bubbling with barely suppressed giggles. It's infuriating. _Ren_ is even more infuriating, staring around in a kind of bovine early morning stupor with those large brown eyes of his, like the gravity of their situation hasn't made its way through his thick skull.

“There’s an elephant in the room,” Ren announces grandly through his mask.

Hux wheels his bicycle onwards with a kind of grim determination. “You know perfectly well why this is happening,” he tells Ren through gritted teeth. “The only elephants here are you and Phasma.”

“I'm not an elephant.”

“No,” says Hux. “You're a cow. A stupid cow.”

“You’re afraid,” says Ren. “Of elephants.”

“ _Ren_ ,” he snaps.

“You’d rather think about your room,” says Ren, in that stupid monotone of his. “Than deal with the elephants.”

“I’m going to be _homeless_ thanks to you,” he replies. “But by all means, keep prattling on about elephants and how I’m ignoring the _real_ issues at hand.”

Ren is silent for long enough that Hux begins to think he might have actually won that particular round.

“You’re afraid,” says Ren, almost immediately and Hux barely suppresses a sigh. “You’re afraid of disorder.”

“No fucking shit.”

“You’re afraid of the way _feelings_ make you feel.” 

“That’s perfectly logical,” Hux says disparagingly. “Not that I’d expect any better from _you_.”

“You don’t like feelings,” Ren continues relentlessly, “because they mean you can’t control everything.”

Hux rolls his eyes at this. “You’re highly mistaken if you believe that’s the point at hand here, and not your poorly thought out, poorly executed, absolutely _mental_ actions from last night –“

“This,” Ren finishes triumphantly, with the air of one who has made an important discovery, “is why you’re scared of elephants – why you don’t want to think about last night.”

Of course, Ren wants to force the point to its bloody conclusion instead of taking the graceful out Hux has been at _pains_ to give him.

“It's my birthday,” he tells Ren. “It can wait.”

“You fancy me,” Ren says with childish glee.

Hux grits his teeth and walks faster in a sad attempt to lose Ren. Ren simply lengthens his stride, an uneasy presence on the periphery of Hux’s vision.

“I think you’re quite passable,” says Hux, through his teeth. “One would assume a certain amount of attraction in order for us to – snog in bathrooms.”

 _Like teenagers_ , the sensible part of his mind screeches at him.

“To snog in bathrooms,” Hux repeats. “Or in any way spend time in each others’ presence.”

“You _like_ me,” says Ren, completely missing the point as usual. “This is why you’re afraid, because you haven’t planned this part of your life out, because you’re a _career man_.”

For someone who makes a point of letting everyone know how much he loathes his father, Ren really spends a lot of time acting like him. He does this obliviously too, with a total lack of self-awareness that makes Hux itch to film him one day and show it back to him when Ren’s on a rant about his father.

“At least,” says Hux with dignity, “ _I’m_ going somewhere.”

The punch of this statement is somewhat lessened by the fact that they arrive at the cycle stand outside the building in which Hux has his lecture at this precise moment. Ren simply raises his eyebrows as though this coincidence proves his point somehow.

“Afraid,” says Ren sagely. “You wouldn’t run away if you weren’t afraid of its being true.”

“Look here,” Hux says firmly. “I don’t – have feelings.”

Ren lounges insolently against the stand in a way that makes Hux feel like he’s being back up against an invisible wall as Hux secures his bike. “You’re angry. That’s a feeling.”

“I don’t have feelings for _you_ ,” says Hux. “I don’t –“

“You didn’t let the police arrest me last night.”

“Because your mother would have then personally evaluated my dissertation and I’d be in trouble because _you_ got into trouble in my general vicinity.”

“You let me sleep on your bed.”

“Sheer human decency,” says Hux.

“And,” Kylo edges closer to him, “you’re late for class because you didn’t want to wake me.”

“I didn’t want to disturb Mildew,” Hux says. It sounds flimsy even to his ears.

Kylo Ren removes his mask, in a – Hux doesn’t know, but it’s definitely _some_ kind of gesture. A _meaningful_ gesture with a meaning that is _unimportant_ and _irrelevant_ because this is _not happening_. And Ren isn’t going to _win_ at this – thing – even if it means not taking a step back to escape the way the invisible wall is digging into his back, because Ren isn’t going to _win_ at this, because Hux _always_ wins –

“You like me,” says Ren, leaning closer.

“I _tolerate_ you –“

“You _tolerate_ the rugby team,” says Ren. His voice is _much_ too soft. The bike handle is hard and weirdly textured underneath Hux's fingers. “You feel _affection_ for me, even when I play Meat Loaf at three in the morning outside your window.”

There are sirens going off inside Hux’s head. A small and distant part of him tells him that he’s five minutes late for his lecture already. Thinking, time and space all seem muddled and confused.

“Not even _you_ can make Meat Loaf cool,” Hux tells Ren, somewhat obscurely, before Ren leans in and kisses him.

* * *

At twenty to one, the last time she checked the odds, Phasma calculates she’s made herself a cool two hundred quid, simply by betting _on_ Ren instead of against him. Or as she put it to Jamie B while placing her bet, on Hux’s unerring instinct for making mistakes where Kylo Ren is concerned. She’s merely surprised that it took him _only_ five years to sort himself out, stop worrying and love the metaphorical bomb, so to speak. Personally she’d have put it at the seven year mark. Clearly, Kylo Ren has hidden depths and abilities he’s concealed remarkably well from everyone. Hux obviously seems to enjoy snogging him by the bicycle stand, even though he’s late for his lecture, so Ren _must_ have some hidden powers of seduction. Probably the ones not involving Meat Loaf.

The video of them snogging away goes up on the blog, just after the one of Hux dragging Ren away by the scruff of his neck. Phasma does not title it ‘I’m always fucking right you fucks’, but it’s a close call.

She _does_ however text Hux a link to the video with ‘I’m always fucking right. So when are you going to swoon into his arms?’.

* * *

“Okay you mad bastard,” Hux says, surprised to find that one of his hands is entwined in Kylo Ren’s hair. “You win.”

Kylo grins in a way that would be absolutely insufferable if it wasn’t, probably, for all the funny hormones and chemicals and stuff fucking with Hux’s brain, telling him that the correct word is _adorable_.

Hux does not find things adorable. Not even his cats. 

Ren’s hand in his hair is _also_ very nice, he notes idly.

“You’re paying for dinner though,” he mumbles against Kylo’s mouth – again, with the hormones and words like ‘warm’ and ‘soft’ and ‘nice’ – as he checks his watch. “Also I’m late for my lecture, let me go –“

“ _Impossible_ ,” Kylo tells him. “You’re fucking impossible.”

* * *

Leia barely stifles the urge to scream when her son comes trailing back home with a boombox which, as she understands the story, is about half the reason behind the rugby team having spent the night in jail.

“I have a boyfriend,” he tells her importantly.

She wonders _when_ having a boyfriend became an excuse for getting everyone else in one’s vicinity arrested and then wonders who planted that daft idea in her son’s head.

“I’m going to murder Luke,” she says, because out of Luke and Han, Luke’s the one who’s a hopeless romantic and the one most likely, therefore, to have planted this idea in her son’s head. “That isn’t me letting you off the hook, by the way – why’d you steal the boombox?”

Kylo Ren stares shiftily at his boots. “To get a boyfriend?”

Leia stares at her son, temporarily bereft of speech.

“It was Finn’s idea,” he says, wilting visibly under her withering gaze.

Leia mentally assigns half the blame to Han, upgrading him from ‘innocent bystander’ to ‘probably responsible for this in the grand scheme of things (genetics). It’s exactly like Han, exactly the sort of thing he’d do – running around and getting sucked up into everyone else’s (Luke’s) poorly thought out bright ideas.

“You know what, forget it,” she tells him, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I give up. Bring him to tea, that’s all I ask for. No sense – not even something remotely logical – just – tell me in advance.”

* * *

“I can’t believe it fucking worked?” says Rey incredulously, chin digging into Poe’s shoulder as she and Finn watch the video on loop on his phone. “I can’t believe Kylo Ren made it fucking work.”

“Half the rugger team was arrested last night,” Finn tells her, across Poe’s back. “I don’t think he made it work.”

“Yeah I don’t think so,” says Poe. “Not if he used Meat Loaf like Skywalker suggested.”

“Meat Loaf,” Finn wrinkles his nose in disgust. “ _Meat Loaf_.”

“Careful,” says Poe. “Someone’s going to say that about Tinie Tempah when you’re in your fifties.”

“Yeurgh.”

“The youths of today,” Poe rolls his eyes, but his voice is indulgent. “Stop _fiddling_ , you lost fair and square Rey.”

“I still can’t believe it – _ow_ – oh –“

Kylo Ren trips over to where they’re sitting, looking, for all the world, like an overgrown seven year old – a gleeful grin plastered over his face, shoelaces undone and his clothes rumpled and scruffy. Rey feels, rather than sees, Poe barely suppress a laugh at the sight.

“Congratulations,” Poe tells Kylo Ren. “I heard you got the boy.”

“Yes,” Kylo says, rocking gently on his heels. “He doesn’t like Meat Loaf though. It was a stupid idea of yours.”

Rey snorts and hurriedly turns it into a sneeze as Poe pinches Finn before he can tell Ren it was all his doing.

“I’m sure the poetry helped though,” she tells him.

“I’m going to have dinner with him,” Kylo tells her. “I’m going to write him a poem.”

He glances pointedly at Finn. “No boomboxes –“

Finn raises his hands. “I didn’t say anything about boomboxes – all I wanted to know was if you meant to enact an ‘eighties romcom –“

The glint in Poe Dameron’s eyes is positively _wicked_ and Rey feels a hysterical giggle bubble up inside her.

“Dinner?” says Poe. “You ought to take him _dancing_.”

“Dancing?” says Kylo uncertainly.

Rey hastily buries her face in Poe’s shoulder to hide her laughter.

“Dancing,” Poe replies. “Give him the time of his life.”

“No,” says Finn in a hollow voice. “Not another fucking ‘eighties romcom.”

**Author's Note:**

> 'I've been swept away into another sphere' owes its atrocious existence exclusively to the shitty first draft of Empire Strikes Back. Thanks, George Lucas.
> 
> Come say hello and maybe also flail about these idiots to me on [tumblr](http://tobermoriansass.tumblr.com).


End file.
